Top 10 Facts about Energy Benchmarking in DC

With energy efficiency becoming increasingly important as cities strive to be green, benchmarking has become a standard in cities like New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and most recently, in DC! The Clean and Affordable Energy Act of 2008 requires all private buildings over 50,000 gross square feet in DC to report their energy use to the District Department of the Environment. WegoWise is here to break down the facts and tell you the top ten things you need to know if you are a building owner in DC:

By 2014, ALL commercial and multifamily buildings over 50,000 square feet will be required to benchmark on an annual basis. The guideline for who will need to begin reporting and when is as follows:

After the initial reporting, building owners are required to submit reports to DDOE annually by April 1st.

The results for over 200 District government facilities were released on January 18, 2013. Check out which buildings are performing well, and which could benefit from some energy retrofits here.

Want a sneak peek of what you might read in the report? Overall, there is room for improvement for Department of General Services (DGS) buildings. The average rating for these buildings is within the 44th percentile of facility performance nationwide.

Benchmarking data must be submitted through ENERGY STAR’s Portfolio Manager. WegoWise can help you with this - we export data to Portfolio Manager automatically!

Residential tenants are NOT required to submit energy, water, or space use information.

Non-residential tenants however, ARE required to provide energy, water, and space use data within 30 days of the building owner’s request.

In some cases, if a building owner has leased a building to a single tenant, the building owner may, with the tenant’s consent, delegate all benchmarking responsibility to the tenant.

Fines will be distributed to building owners or non-residential tenants that don’t report by the deadline. You can be fined UP TO $100/day, so don’t wait until it’s too late to benchmark your buildings!

YOU can help to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the District by taking measures to cut your building’s energy use. The District’s 2006 Greenhouse Gas Inventory found that 74% of greenhouse gas emissions released in the District are from buildings, and primarily large commercial buildings. Help make your city a cleaner and healthier place by taking the initiative to green your building!